Harry Potter And The Method Of Rationalization
by CanThisBeWrongYesYesItCan
Summary: Petula married a biochemist instead of that irrational Surdley, and then everything went to Potter. A certain well-known fanfiction gets mustaches drawn all over it. Rated M out of an abundance of caution.
1. A Day Of Infinite Improbability

Disclaimer: Eliezer Yudkowsky pwned me.

This...thing...was begun for my own amusement in 2015, almost immediately lost to a hard-drive incident, recovered three years later from an unexpected backup, and declared finished after a few minor edits.

Were it a parody it would stick closer to the plot. Were it a satire it would comment on HPMOR as a dark mirror of canon. Instead it is a lampoon!

→ NOTE: Not a spittoon / not a cartoon / not a harpoon / but a LAMPOON!

 **Please visit EXAMPLE DOT COM for:**

* information on IANA-managed Reserved Domains.

Reviews make me happy. _Paramount On Parade_ , they don't make 'em like that any more…

And now—

* * *

 _Under the moonlight, the serious moonlight, something glimmers. Black robes fall. Blood sprays higgledy-piggledy, and someone screams a word._

"Medic!"

* * *

After many years of contemplation, Professor Michael Evans-Verres (B. Sc., Biochemistry) had finally yielded to temptation and practicality and simply built his house out of bookcases. And so it was that you couldn't get to the bathroom in the Vevans-Erres residence without suffering a dozen papercuts from the countless volumes devoted to maths, science, history, and the unraveling of the mystery that all started with the Big Bang with which the house was lined.

To this A-frame-shaped stack of paper was added, one fateful July 30th in 1991, one more sheet, one single less-than-wafer-thin piece of parchment...

...and so the Professor, his wife Mary Ann Ginger Petula Nervous-Errors, and their adopted son, Harry James Newton Einstein Surak Potter Erdős-Verres-Evans of Ulm were buried alive like the Collyer Brothers.

The next day, after the bulldozers had been, a confrontation occurred.

"You're joking," said Michael to his beautiful wife.

"If I were joking, I would say, what do you do with an elephant with three balls," she replied.

"Walk him and pitch to the gorilla," said Harry. "Look, Dad, it's a letter inviting me to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Mom agrees that it's a letter from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Either she's lying or insane or joking or correct, and she's not joking, so are you going to phone up the booby hatch to eliminate another possibility or am I?"

"I'm not insane," said Petula petulantly. "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe."

"Shut it, mom, we need professional evaluation on this issue," said Harry, who was already on the phone and six digits into the number for the local loony bin.

"Look, dear, I'm a scientist, or at least an academic," said Michael. "I need proof."

"How about this?" said Petula. "I used to look like Fiona Shaw, but my sister fixed my face. With magic. Which you must NEVER NEVER DO."

" _Hello, is that Bedlam? I need a psychiatrist, stat! ...what do you mean, is this the Evans-Verreses again?"_

"You know, I wondered why you look exactly like Zooey Deschanel," said Michael. "But you'll have to do better than that — as you know, since we take the _Skeptical Inquirer._ Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence!"

Petula sighed, grasped her nose firmly, and pulled her own face off.

" _Sweet Jesus_ _!"_ said Michael.

"Shut it, Dad, we're atheists," chided Harry, hanging up the telephone. He scanned the numbers pencilled next to the phone, said "Whoa, brainwave," and started dialing James Randi.

Petula stuck her face back on. "This is called Spellotape," she explained, winding the transparent substance many times around her head. "My sister fixed my face with Transfiguration, which never sticks, you see."

" _Sweet Jesus_ _!"_ said Michael again.

"Michael!" chided Petula, winding more tape around her face until she looked a proper mummy again.

" _Bugger, voice mail. Hey, I forgot we've got Penn Jillette on speed dial!"_

"Oh, come now, Harry," said Michael, taking the phone away. "Really, magic? I thought you'd know better than to take this seriously, son, even if you're only ten. Magic is just about the most unscientific thing there is! Pish posh, fiddle faddle and also foo! This is clearly just an LSD flashback!"

"Ideas are tested by experiment!" said Harry. "Zombie Feynman, XKCD!"

"Not by prodigies," said Michael. "Not in my house!"

"The house collapsed, dear," said Petula.

"Shut it, Pet. There'll be no testing of hypotheses in this rubble, young man, and that's final!"

"What do _you_ know," sneered Harry. "You're just a - a - professor of biochemistry!"

" _So was Isaac Asimov!"_ roared Michael.

Harry took his hat off and put it over his heart. _"Isaac Asimov,"_ everyone said reverently. "All right, I'll do it _outside_!" added Harry.

And so saying he grabbed his Spider-Man® calligraphy kit and wrote a quick letter accepting his invitation, added " _P.S. Please Send Incontrovertible Proof This Is Not A Deception, Lie Or Hallucination_ ", stuffed it into the postage-paid reply envelope, and ran into the back yard with it.

"Now, how do I mail this?" he wondered aloud. "Well, it's a magic letter," he rationalized, "and magic is just sufficiently advanced technology, so —"

And raising his head and the letter to the skies he screamed " _CHAP FOEY RIDER!_ "

A grey pegasus pony wearing a postman's hat swooped down and carried the letter away.

Harry turned to the opened door standing alone in the rubble and said "What do you say to that, old man?"

Michael Evans-Verres said "Welp," and flipped the dining room table just as the Army Corps of Librarians arrived.


	2. Everything You Know Is Wrong

" _This universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs."_

* * *

Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, gazed unblinkingly up through slit-pupiled eyes at Professor Herr Doktor Michael Evans-Verres, who was floating helplessly above her, and said "I CAN HAZ STUDENT?"

Harry James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree Potter Evans-Verres looked down at her and screamed. "YOU TURNED INTO A MEME! AN INTERNET MEME!"

MacGonagall laid down and LOLed in the sun. "Happens a lot in these stories," she mewed.

 _("An_ old _internet meme!" said Harry._

" _It's impolite to refer to a lady's age," said MacGonagall.)_

" _Noether fiawol!"_ gibbered Harry.

" _Phlogiston fijagh!"_ retorted MacGonagall, and resumed human form.

A blur was coming over Harry's vision as his tenses began to fail. Conversion from matter to idea and back again! His faith in materialism shook like the formally nonexistent pillars of Platonia.

He summoned all his power of rationalization.

"Well," he said, "stuff happens."

"Precisely," said Deputy Headmistress Kajagoogoo. "So magic. Much awesome. Now, regarding your financial aid application..."

"Hold your thestrals," said the paterfamilias. "What about Harry's condition?"

Professor McGonagall twirled to face Michael in horror. "MPREG ALREADY?"

"It'd be only what you deserve for invoking memes," sniffed Michael, "but no. Harry has a condition for attending Hogwarts, viz, a Time Turner."

"And if I don't get it I'm going to Durmstrang School Of Dark Arts and Arse-Kicking instead," said Harry.

"You know a lot about the world of magic considering you found out about it only this morning," said Mistress Daemonical in a surly tone.

"We read fast in this house," said Harry.

"That we do," said Daddy.

"Also, squib living in the house next door," said Mummy through layers of Spellotape. "My sister may have mentioned her in passing."

Both of Harry's parents howled with laughter at that, like they thought it was all a big joke.

"Oh," said Harry's father, eyes bright, "we're talking _Eurema's Dam_ levels of pwned."

Harry's mother and father nodded in perfect unison.

"All right, deal," sighed MacGonagall.

"Mum! Dad!" cried Harry. _"A whole wizarding culture, just waiting to be took!"_


	3. Bypassing Reality

" _Doc-tor WHOOOOOOOO?"_

* * *

Professor Cheesymac swiftly spirited Harry off his new Magical World, specifically to the magical pub known as the Leaky Cauldron where she ordered a small firewhiskey, leave the bottle.

Only a moment passed before the first drunk peered at the lightning scar on Harry's forehead cried "MY GOD, IT'S — SCARFACE MCGILLICUDDY!"

"NO IT'S NOT!" roared the Professor. "IT'S HARRY POTTER EVENTHORIZON-VERISIGN-ERSATZ! Oh bugger, this stuff goes right through me..."

Many knees were in mid-fold when someone else entered the pub.

" _HAGRID!_ " cried the patrons.

And so Harry was able to go about his business. "Shirley Temple," he said to the barman, and scanned the room. Yes, many worshipers for his future cult — and, sitting quietly just above the chamber door, a man who looked like a pale bust of Pallas. His eyes were pale blue, one had a film over it, and Harry felt a sudden sense of _deja vu_ when he said "Be seeing you," just before turning into a screeching photino bird and vanishing into the screaming void.

"Happens a lot in these stories," said Professor Macintosh around the neck of her bottle. "That was Professor Quirinus R.J. Quirrell. He'll be teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts this year. _At Hogwarts_ ," she added darkly. "Mr. Potter... do you know... how much have you been told... about how your original parents died?"

"Eaten by a rhinoceros," said Harry promptly.

"Alas," said Professor MacGoonshow, "a pleasant lie to conceal a dark and awesome truth."

"I love awesome!" said Harry.

"Do you know, I rather thought you might," said McGottacatchemall, and sighed like a desert wind on a cold dark night.

Something strange clutched at Harry's heart. It was his appendix. "What... did happen?" he murmured, massaging it back into place.

"Tell you momentarily," said McG, "when we go to the bookstore. Put on my tab, Tom," she added to the bartender, who wasn't there. Neither was the bar. Because they were standing in the bookstore of Flourish and Blotts.

"What just happened?" said Professor McGoneagain.

"I'm sorry!" said Harry. "It's a thing I do. It's a family tradition, or an old charter, or something."

"Well, Flourish and Blotts don't take American Express," sniffed Professor Polygon. "We'll need to fetch you some gold from Gringotts."

"What?!" screamed Harry. "An idealistic-contra-materialistic magical society and you're on the GOLD standard?! HAVE YOU NOT HEARD OF MODERN MONETARY THEORY?!"

"It's only 1991, Mr Potter! Warren Mosler hasn't written Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy yet!"

"How do you know about that, then?"

"Time turners," began McGallimaufry, and Harry chimed in with "the solution to every problem!"

"Except," added the Professor solo, "for He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, the Dark Lord, Voldemort."

" _Voldemort?"_ Harry whispered. The name burned cold and ruthless, with the diamond clarity of a hammer of pure titanium descending upon an anvil of yielding flesh, whee-splat, and a chill swept over Harry as he felt the sudden urge to use the term _déjà vu_.

"Steady on, boy, it's only a name," said Professor MagAnalClog. "But he was a mean, dirty, no-good, low down rotten dirty liar cheat horse thief and a poor judge of whisky. Oh, he was evil!" shuddered Professor LlamaConGag. "Yermy Wibble called for increased taxes and conscription and Voldemort boiled his dog!"

"What did Voldemort have against taxes and conscription?"

"Nothing, it was dogs he didn't like," said GalaManClog, and laughed until she ran out of phlegm. "He didn't like parents, either. He slew your parents, right before your baby eyes, and your puppy, too."

Tears were coming into Harry's eyes. He wiped them away in anger or maybe desperation, _I didn't know those people, not really, they aren't my parents now, it would be pointless to feel so sad for them -_

When Harry was done sobbing into the witch's robes, he looked up, and felt a little bit better to see tears in Professor McGonagall's eyes as well. Then he realised they were his own tears. "Sorry," he said.

"You're a little fountain, you are," said Professor ClamGaolNag, pulling a bath towel out of her sleeve and wiping them both down with it.

"So what happened?" Harry said, his voice trembling.

"The Dark Lord came to Godric's Hollow," Professor McGonagall said in a whisper. "You should have been hidden, but you were betrayed. The Dark Lord killed James, and he killed Lily, and he came in the end to you, to your cot."

"What about my puppy?"

"Stepped on it with his hob-nailed boot. And then with the other one. And then he cast the Killing Curse at you, and that was where it ended. The Killing Curse is formed of pure hate, and strikes directly at the soul, severing it from the body. It cannot be blocked, and whomever it strikes, they die. But you survived. You are the only person ever to survive. The Killing Curse rebounded and struck the Dark Lord, leaving only the burnt hulk of his body and a scar upon your forehead. That was the end of the terror, and we were free. That, Harry Potter, is why people want to see the scar on your forehead, and why they inexplicably want to see you naked."

"I beg your pardon?" said Harry.

"Fans," said AllMcGonga with a shudder, "they're creepier than You-Know-Who."

"We can take that to the bank," said Harry.


	4. Harry Invents Forex Arbitrage

" _Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold—"_

* * *

"I _know_ he got out of the eternally sealed vault, Griphook," said the Goblin King pleasantly. "The operative question is, who _let_ him out of the eternally sealed vault?"

Griphook shuddered. "He said...he said it was a goblin named Delbert."

 _"There are no goblins named Delbert!"_


	5. The Plot Abbreviation Horror

" _Nature, nurture — I'm the Potter with the wand."_

* * *

Despite Professor aaacGgllMno's best magical disguise-work, everyone in Diagonal Ley recognised Harry immediately.

"Well, what _other_ 11-year-old would I be escorting?" said the Professor, slapping herself in the head. "I should have disguised _myself!_ "

"It's that they think they know me that irritates me," said Harry. "Say, that reminds me of the thing that goes, do you know the man in the mask, and you say no, and then off comes the mask and it's the Prime Minister, and you were totally wrong because you do know the man in the mask.

"Unless maybe it's the thing where the mask comes off and it's a gorilla underneath, and the face of Patrick MacGoohan underneath that — hey, Professor, where'd you go?"

"I disguised myself as Patrick MacGoohan," said the Professor. "Now we're going to get you fitted for school robes by Madam Malkin."

One scene change later, Harry was standing on wooden stool being fitted for robes. Next to him was a boy with blond hair and a teddy bear.

"Hallo," said the blond boy languidly. "I'm Malfoy. Or I will be. Father in the way, you know."

"Have you ever seen a movie called STRANGERS ON A TRAIN?" said Harry. "I'm Potter. Or I used to be. Father failed to get out of the way, you know."

"Gosh," said Malfoy, peering at the lightning scar. "You bumped off the Dark Lord, and now you're offering to rid me of my inconvenient paterfamilias? What's in it for you?"

"I'm starting a conspiracy," said Harry. "Well, I will be shortly. And you would look damn good in green felt, I'm just saying."

"But what about the morality?" said Malfoy. "The guilt? Have you read a comic book called TALES OF THE BLACK FREIGHTER?"

"Allow me to introduce you to my little friend," said Harry, and explained the power of rationalization.

"Excellent!" breathed Malfoy.

And they both played air guitar.

* * *

"I'm Aloysius," said the teddy bear.


	6. Planning The Fanfic

" _If you thought your day was DADAist, try mine."_

* * *

Harry James Potter-Extrapolated-Volition was walking down Diagon Alley, making oblique gestures at a fresh-bought Bag Of Holding (not the infinite capacity kind; it just did bag-switching on the fly), and Professor MacGoohan was watching him do it.

"So," he said eventually. "I just taught a leather sack British Sign Language, but couldn't teach it to add. how does magic work, exactly?"

"By magic," she said.

"...Oh. Is there any method to it?"

"Nope."

"Pity. I was looking forward to doing a lot of basic permutation work. You know, like how the Chinese alchemists discovered gunpowder by applying the false but useful philosophical concept that substances have yin and yang properties."

"Sorry. It's all rote memorization and we haven't the _slightest_ idea why anything works."

"Clearly I'm going to have to tear this world to its foundations and start over from basic principles," said Harry, and was once again magnetically levitated into Flourish & Blotts.

"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence," said MacGoohan, and tossed him back into the street. He promptly Apparated back into the bookstore with a _poit_. "Oh, god, another Ravenclaw," she said.

"What's a Ravenclaw?" asked Harry, flipping through all the most advanced Arithmancy textbooks and finding that they had no actual magic in them and were in fact rebound copies of _Trigonometry For Dummies._

"Ravenclaw is a house at Hogwarts. It is the repository for little Victor Frankensteins who want to rebuild the world in their own image."

"And none of them have succeeded?" said Harry in tones of mounting horror and dismay.

"I rather think they all have," said MacGoohan archly. "Look around!"

"Oog," said Harry, who had just been walking a street less cobblestone than cobbled-together. "What are the other houses?"

"Gryffindor's for vigorous people of vigor. Have you ever rappelled up a building because the electric staircase was broken?"

"I sleep on the floor because making my bed is too much like work."

"Mm-hm. Definitely not Gryffindor, thank Merlin, nor Hufflepuff either. Hufflepuff's for hard work and the magic of friendship."

"Has it got ponies?"

"Certainly not," said MacGoohan, thinking of the slang term for cheat-sheets.

"Too bad. I love ponies. They're very good with mustard. What's the other one?"

"Slytherin, the house of Voldemort sympathizers. Well, they were pro-Voldemort _pre_ -Voldemort, really..."

"The Low Tax Torture Party?"

"That's the one."

"Aha. So, is Voldemort really dead if his ideas remain?"

MacGoohan shuddered. "Some say he simply moved to another country. Let's not think about it."

"Not thinking about it is exactly what he wants," said Harry. "Well, anyway, I'm definitely gonna be a Ravenclaw." He paused and then added in a confessional rush, "unless I can have a whole new house all to myself because I've been alone my whole insanely brilliant life and so isolation's all I can really cope with!"

"Get a girlfriend, Potter," said MacGoohan sternly.

"Okay."

"And an owl," she added, pointing through the shop window at Eeylops's Owl Emporium across the street.

"NO!" wailed Harry. "OWLS EAT MICE! I AM TOO TINY AND HELPLESS AIEEEEEEEEEE I am totally not an abused child, not even in a former life, I do not believe in preincarnation, boy howdy does my scar hurt, are we done?"

"Harry James Tinker-Evans-Chance, that outburst was quite bizarre! I dare you to rationalize it!"

Harry pulled out a SnickersⓇ. "Low blood sugar!"

The Professor grudgingly burst into applause. "But seriously, you should get a pet so you can learn to cope with semi-intelligent creatures on the basis of your shared characteristics of eating, sleeping and pooping."

"I had a pet rock once," said Harry thoughtfully. "It committed suicide. At least that's what my parents told me, though I can't imagine how it hanged itself. From this I learned that I can never love. It is now too late for me. I can never relate to any other epsilon except on the basis of manipulation, and can receive nothing from anyone but narcissistic supply."

"That's not good," ruminated MacGoohan. "According to one of the prophecies, love is your superpower."

"Nah," said Harry. "'s totally physics. Love is biochemistry, that's Dad's department. I'm totes about physics and transaction theory. It's my grand ambition to combine Eric Berne with Max Born!"

"Max Born?" said MacGoohan, confused. "Olivia Newton-John's grandfather?"

" _Never mention that name again!_ " shrieked Harry. "There is no room for pop stars in my universe!"

"You know, I think there _is_ a single room available on the fourth floor by the garbage chute," said MacGoohan.

"DIBS!"

* * *

Aftermath:

Headmaster Albus Dumbledore leaned forward over his desk. His twinkling eyes peered out at Minerva. "So, my dear, how did you find Harry?"

"I gave Cedric Diggory a galleon."


	7. Operation Reciprocity

" _Your awesome is as big as mine!"_

* * *

The next thing Harry knew he was at King's Cross Station.

"Well, good luck, my only adopted son," said Petulia, weeping.

"Shut it, mom," advised Harry, "there's no such thing as luck."

"They _bottle_ it, you dolt," she replied, "it's fscking _magic_."

"So, Platform 9.75000," said Michael through his tears. "How many magical platforms are there between 9 and 10, anyway?"

"An unnatural number, I expect," said Harry. "And I'd hate to walk into the wrong one, so I'm going to do my usual isolated nerdboy thing and hang back and observe until I see some other wizard enter the secret entrance."

A boxed set of redheads walked past and disappeared into a solid wall.

"There we go!" said Harry. "Well, see you in June, if the prophecies don't come into play!" He took off at a run.

"Wait, what?" said Michael. "Prophecies! What prophecies?!"

"The usual," sniffled Petula. "Rosemary's baby, Damien Thorn with extra science..."

Harry disappeared into the wall and the next scene began.

* * *

In short order he found himself settling into a seat on the Hogwarts Express, just another facet of the wizarding world to do away with. Sitting opposite him was the blond boy from Madam Malkin's.

"Hallo," said the blond boy languidly. "Are we doing murder yet, or should we start with rape and work our way up?"

"Hush!" said Harry. "You want to get on J.K. Rowling's bad side? Besides, rape is _biochemistry_. _PhbPchbPhbPchb_!" He paused to spit out the window and into the face of the smallest boy in the redhead boxed set. "Ten points! Stephen Hawking is taken, but I'm totally Stephen Spitting."

"Is it wise to spit in the face of people you haven't met?" inquired the blond boy.

"Nah, he'll turn out to be a normal person. I can sense the future with surprising accuracy because Hilbert space. Incidentally, how are you on hiding bodies?"

"Father makes a market in it," sighed the blond boy. "By the way, my name is Darko. Darko Malfoy. But you can call me Ducky when we get around to the autopsies."

Two tall red-headed boys poked their heads into Harry and Darko's rail compartment. "Oi," said one. "You just spit in the face of our baby brother."

"So what's it to you?" said Harry.

"We _worship_ you for it!" said the other. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a lolly. "We hate his stinking guts. Here, this is called an Acid Pop, if he ever gives you trouble, just stick it in his mouth and dissolve his tongue."

"That sounds cruel," said Harry.

"Nah, he doesn't feel pain the way humans do," rationalized the first one. "Just ignore the blood and screaming."

"You, I like," said Harry, accepting the Acid Pop and tucking it into his Bag of Holding.

"So," said the blond boy once the door was closed again, "can we get on with the murdering?"

Harry, almost having second thoughts, said "Why do you want to kill your father, other than to inherit his title and estate?"

"I hate him," yawned the blond boy. "When I fell off a broom and broke every bone in my body he sat up with me for six hours to make me feel indebted —told me it made him miss casting a vote in the Wizengamot. But he lied, he cast it using a Time Turner. _That's_ why I want to kill him."

"For his seat on the Wizengamot."

"Oh yes. It's all old-boy-network, 24-hour-bribery service, get-out-of-Azkaban-free when you're on the Wizengamot. Heaven!"

"Heaven does not exist," said Harry sternly.

The door opened again. It was the small redhead with spit running down into his worn shirt collar. "They said you're Harry Potter," he sobbed, "But I know you're not Harry Potter, because Harry Potter would never do something so mean."

"Quite right!" said Harry. "I'm Spock Tibbs, but you can call me Mr. Frost. I am more powerful than time itself."

He slammed the door shut, removing some of the boy's long nose, and made a mental note to send him a bill for the plastic surgery. "Now, Darko, about our conspiracy," said Harry. "Do you know anything about — science?"

"No, but I'm keen to learn."

"Good! For Harry Crumb-Zell never learns, only teaches. Now, the first thing I'll teach you about is game theory. The Nash Equilibrium is—"

The door slammed open again.

"I'm a girl!" said a girl.

"Have a seat!" said Harry. "I'm supposed to get a girlfriend."

"I'm looking for a toad!"

"Well, you found one," sobbed the red-headed gob-faced boy across the hall.

"No, I'm looking for a real toad," explained the girl. "Neville's toad." She pulled a sobbing black-haired boy from her mokeskin pouc. "This is Neville."

"Where's my toad?" said the sobbing black-haired boy. He looked at Harry. Harry made a _PhbPchbPhbPchb_ noise. "That is not my toad!" cried Neville from the racked depths of his nonexistent soul.

"It died," explained Harry kindly, lifting up the corner of his trunk to expose the squashed member of the class Bufonidae. "You should have frozen it when you had the chance. Alcor can't wait til tomorrow."

"NO!" screamed Neville. "TREVOR!"

The girl stuffed Neville back into her pouc. "Now, what was this about game theory? I'm a genius and love learning about all kinds of theories."

"Weren't you LISTENING?" screamed Harry. "I said HAVE A SEAT, are you STUPID?"

"Only compared to you," she sniffed, and flounced down.

"Humility, good, you're minion number two," said Harry. He opened his trunk and got out his Spider-Man calligraphy kit and made a sign reading MENSA MEMBERS ONLY, which he hung on the outside of the door to avoid further interruptions. After a moment's reconsideration he took it down again to add NO LIT MAJORS. "What's your name, girl?"

"Hermione," said Hermione. "Hermione Granger. Initials HG. That's Mercury, which is my alchemical function in Harry Potter stories."

"Not in _this_ one!" chortled Harry, carefully inscribing, in parentheses, NO POMO on his sign before returning it to the outside of the door. "I declare the first meeting of _Get Rid Of Slimy normalS_ open! Now, we begin with Gilliland's Law: _prioritize, optimize, finalize_!" He flipped Hermione two Knuts. "Go get us some Klatchian coffees, will you, Miss Granger?"


	8. Sorting Harry's Warped Drives

" _What happened to Atlantis?"_  
" _Someone left Aguamenti running."_

* * *

Harry checked his Super Genius wrist watch; the hands of Wile E. Coyote indicated 6:42. He was standing in the Great Hall of Hogwarts. He donned sunglasses.

" _Evanesco-Veritas, Potter, James, Harry!"_ read Professor MacGoohan from the list of new students.

Harry marched across the floor to the Sorting Stool. Everyone in the room watched him go. The students. The teachers. And, from the biggest chair in the room, Headmaster Professor Arbus Wulfraed Alberich Fred Read-The-Oxford-Unabridged-Entry-It-Doesn't-Just-Mean-Bumblebee Dumbledore, a wizard with a beard marked off in years.

From the Sorting Stool Harry picked up the Hat that did the sorting, dislodged the cat from inside it, and placed it upon his head.

To the sound of a long wire being struck with a polished artillery shell the Hat immediately achieved transcendence, disappeared in a blaze of glory, and was not seen again on the Earth.

"Possibly a next step in our evolution," said Harry. "RAVENCLAW!"

"Um, yay?" said a small professor.

Professor Dumbledore said, "Will Mr Filch kindly fetch the animatronic Four Founders from the basement that we may Sort the remaining students?"

Harry went over to the Ravenclaw table and sat next to Hermione.

"Well, that was odd," she said, presenting him with a cup of Klatchian coffee. Unlike any other table, Ravenclaw had its own Klatchian coffee maker. They called it the knurd house.

"Yep," said Harry. "Actually my computer brain is so overclocked on this stuff —" he raised the cup — "that we had a whole long conversation about where to put me before it couldn't take any more and sublimed."

"What'd it say?"

"Oh," said Harry, and paused to drain his coffee in one gulp, "Slytherin's Basilisk would be happy with me in his house, Professor MacDuff would sooner set fire to Gryffindor Tower with everyone inside than let me in hers, and I love ponies. What'd the hat say to you?"

"Same thing."

"WATHANMATES!" cried Harry. "Oh, and apparently I intend to invent the chain-guillotine. Like a chainsaw, only with added AW350M4."

"Ew!" said Hermione. "Squick!"

"And humane! Wait, you did say quick, didn't you...?"

The Founders played one-potato-two-potato until the sorting was done, and then Headmaster Dorbeldumb stood up.

"Before you chow down I should like to say a few words," he said, "and as I can't help but notice that we omitted the sorting hat song, and we need to do a school song too, let's sing them all together:

 _Happy Happy Boom Boom, Happy Happy Boom Boom  
Happy Happy Boom Boom, Happy Happy Boom Boom  
Happy Happy Boom Boom, Happy Happy Boom Boom  
Boomy Boomy Swamp Swamp Swamp!_

 _Yay Ravenclaw, Gryffindor and Slytherin,  
the houses for those of you who prefer  
pseudointellectualism, bullying and corruption  
to the sultry bursts of ecstasy that compose life with Hufflepuffs.  
Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Rah Rah Rah! And The Muggles!_

"Amen, preach it brother!" yelled a particularly heroic Hufflepuff.

"Hush, Cedric," admonished Bledore. "Let us not dwell on the despair that awaits the other three-quarters of the student body, for there is a reason they all want you dead. In other news, anyone wishing to practice alohomora is invited to try it in the third-floor corridor, where death and adventure await the enterprising. And now, this year's Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher has something to add. Be kind, it's his last year alive."

While the DADA teacher drifted up to the podium like a man suspended by wires, his feet lightly scraping the floor, his terror-stricken face reconfigured into a confident smile. "Good evening," he said in a tone dry but not unwitty. "As you probably know, the position of teacher of Defense Against the Dark Arts was cursed by You-Know-Who Himself. Consequently I will be making a doomed attempt to evade the rule of doom by changing the course, returning to the older, more proactive format titled—"

His fists raised up into the air, his head snapped back ninety degrees and he roared:

 **" _MORTAL KOMBAT!_ "**

He then returned to normal and said "Look forward to it. Thank you and good night."

Quirrel scraped his way back to his seat where he collapsed with a rattle of bones quite like a set of bamboo wind-chimes, and Professor Gongledarg returned to the podium.

"Sleep tight," said the Headmaster, with a little wave to the school. "Don't let the bed-bugs bite. If you do, ask a prefect to Apparate you directly to Madam Pomfrey as it is so frequently fatal."

 _This,_ thought Harry as he brushed treacle-tart crumbs from his robes onto the floor, _is going to be the best year ever._


	9. Wrong Answer (PUNCH)

" _Time traveling Tyler Durden?!"_

* * *

Before going to bed, Harry made a mental note to fetch his signing-bonus Time Turner from MacGonagall and retroactively leave it in his top dresser drawer before he woke up.

When he woke up he found nothing in his top dresser drawer but a note reading " _Bugger, I forgot. Try next drawer down._ "

There was a Time Turner in the next drawer down. He hung it around his neck and looked at himself in the dormitory mirror. Apparently Flavor Flav was a Time Lord, who knew?

On his way downstairs to breakfast he got wedgied by the Gryffindor Inquisition, which was one of the drawbacks to being a Ravenclaw, and made another mental note to wreak horrible revenge.

While planning his horrible revenge he got distracted, walked down one floor too many and found Neville Longbottom being wedgied by the Slytherin Inquisition.

Harry's mental Tony Stark tapped the shoulder of his mental Bruce David Bob Banner. "Right, that's it," he said, in the throes of moral epiphany. "Only _I_ am allowed to trash bozoes!"

He suddenly felt a rustle in his pocket and when he checked it found a note in his own handwriting reading " _Third drawer. Now l_ _ook up._ "

He looked up. All the Slytherins were lying unconscious on the floor.

"Um, yay?" said Neville.

"Huh," said Harry, and put his arm around Neville and took him to breakfast and gave him a donut and apologized for having accidentally crunched his frog, and then gave him a wedgie when corrected on the species.

"You make it hard to love you," said Neville.

"Science!" remarked Harry.

After breakfast Harry returned to the dormitory and found, in the third drawer of his dresser, directions concerning the use of the Time Turner, an Invisibility Cloak tagged " _Property Of Ur Dad_ " in green ink, and a stout stick.

"Cool beans," he said, slapping the knobkerrie into his hand with a meaty smack. "I always said free will was overrated. Not that I had any choice in saying it. ...say, I wonder why no one _else_ with a Time Turner does this sort of thing?"

* * *

He never did remember to get the Time Turner from MacGoohan, but it didn't seem to make any difference.


	10. Unconsciousness

" _I'm so much geniuser than you!"_  
" _In your_ dreams _!"_

* * *

That day they had Charms and Transfiguration classes, and Harry swiftly found out that while Hermione was very good at Charming things. Harry was not.

Harry was sad, and vowed to make up for it in Transfiguration.

"Transfiguration," said Professor MacGoohan, "is not permanent."

Harry raised his hand. "Why?"

"Nobody knows. Now, class, we'll take an Unbreakable Vow never to transfigure anything in any potentially dangerous way."

Harry abruptly lost all motor control. His face splatted into his desk. He made _mrf mrf mrf_ noises. What he was trying to get across was that if transfiguration was impermanent, transfiguring things in dangerous ways would be the _primary purpose of transfiguration_ , blowing people up through steric mismatch would be _The Whole Point._ Why would you do anything _else?_

No one heard his cries; they were taking an Unbreakable Vow. Then they were talking Quidditch and getting debited points for talking Quidditch. He just lay there flatfaced, allowing his tears to merge with the wood of the desktop.

Then he got docked a point for Ravenclaw for not taking his Unbreakable Vow with the rest of the class, and Hermione outTransfigured him and got two points for Ravenclaw, and he went to bed early and cried himself to sleep.

And then he woke up at midnight and realized that he'd failed to rationalize away her superiority and cried himself to sleep again.


	11. Look At These Pecs

" _Wendy! Darling! Light of my life!"_

* * *

The next day Harry arrived early — hours and hours early — twelve-fifteen A.M. — for his class with Professor Quirrel, but Professor Quirrel was already there, drooling into his pillow. Harry wondered briefly how early in the morning he'd have to get up to arrive first; the answer was probably to go without his supper and not go to bed at all.

Gradually the room filled with students. A lot of students. All the students, all three hundred of them.

When the last seat had been filled the Professor's head snapped up, and he ascended to the top of his desk.

" _Posit!_ " he said. "You are being attacked by a Hungarian Horntail and a Mountain Troll, each armed with a bowl of fresh fruit! _What do you do?_

"Don't waste your time answering, the answer is _AVADA KEDAVRA!_ "

The class gasped.

"Yes!" said the Professor, with a charming grin. "The universal solvent! The unforgivable, completely effective Killing Curse!

"Which I will not be teaching you!

"So! Not sure why I mentioned it, other than it's my favorite spell!" The Professor attempted to clap his hands and missed. "Since I won't be teaching that, we'll move on to the only other reasonable response to being attacked by a Hungarian Horntail and a Mountain Troll, each armed with a bowl of fresh fruit —

" _Apparation!_

"Which I will _also_ not be teaching you!

"This brings us to your remaining option, which is the first thing I will be teaching you today — the art of _running away!_ "

With a wobbly wave of his wand the Professor opened the doors to the classroom, and then conjured up a Hungarian Horntail and a Mountain Troll, each armed with a bowl of fresh fruit.

He waited. Everyone stared at him.

"NONE of you running?" he roared. "ARE YOU ALL TOO STUPID TO LIVE?"

"I ran, sir!" said Harry, waving from the hallway.

Harry, still sitting at his desk, quickly threw on his Invisibility Cloak and thanked Wells for Time Turners.

"At least SOMEONE has a rage to live!" said the Professor. "But of course a rage to _live_ won't keep you _alive!_ You also need the _urge to kill,_ or you won't be _able_ to when you _need_ to! So we'll be working on that today. Your first exercise: punching each other in the face!"

Harry immediately ran over and punched his future self in the face.

"First blood!" said Quirrel, as future blood sprayed wildly from Harry's future nose. "Excellent!" He pressed his wand to a small white paper bag, which began making internal popping noises. "Many a great battle has begun where no one knew who threw the first punch, not even the man who threw it. One house point for every drop of blood spilled this day in terrible and glorious combat! Give into your hate, my young apprentices!"

" _Spread out!"_ shouted Darko Malfoy, and backhanded his minions Crabbe and Goyle, who were sitting to either side of him. They in turn backhanded the students next to them, and soon the room was caught up in an orgy of violence, which Quirrel observed dispassionately while making valuable suggestions and comments with the aid of small robot sock puppets.

 _This is the single greatest human to ever live,_ thought Harry as he crawled under a desk and picked up discarded popcorn, salting it from his bloody nose. _By the end of class all the house point counters will have run out of jewels. He's not just teaching us Dark Arts,_ he's teaching us how to reform Quidditch!

 _...Wait, I haven't learned about Quidditch yet! Which Harry AM I?!_


	12. Dislocating The Hypotenuse

" _The madness has got me going crazy."_

* * *

Harry woke up Thursday morning with a fantastic time travel idea in the area of getting difficult math problems done faster. It absolutely positively had to be tested right away, immediately, now.

And in fact even as the thought crossed his mind he heard his own distinctive footsteps approaching, and the sound of his dresser drawer opening and closing.

After the footsteps faded away again he reached out, opened the drawer and read the contents of the paper his future self had left.

 _Do Notte Mine Bittecoin_

* * *

There was nothing for breakfast but Frooty Moffat Loops, and they tasted strange. Were there classes Thursday? He was in too bad a mood to care.

Thursday afternoon was Broomstick Flying Lessons. The girls had started Thursday morning and were still flitting around in the sky, sidesaddle.

Harry stared at the broomsticks and thought until beads of sweat formed on his brow, trying to justify broomsticks from a design perspective. It was clearly insane. Then Madam Hooch, the instructor, explained that as usual they were all facing the wrong direction, that the bristle end went frontwise, because the twigs were all ley-line dymaxion dowsing rods that _pulled_ the broom through the air, and well, there you go.

"Stick out your right hand over the broom, or left hand if you're left-handed," called Madam Hooch. "And say, UP!"

"What if we're ambidextrous?" pouted Harry.

"Shut—"

"UP!" everyone shouted.

The broomstick leaped eagerly into Harry's hand.

The sheer horror of being a natural at magical athletics caused him to pass out cold.

When he woke up, he found that one of Darko Malfoy's minions had pinched Neville's Idontrecall, a device that told you that you'd forgotten something but not what it was, which basically meant that it was always on and so Neville didn't really give a rat-onna-stick about it, which made Malfoy's minion really mad for some reason beyond the understanding of a supergenius, and so Harry was obliged to make use of his Time Turner and Invisibility Cloak and Stout Stick again, so that was all right too, except that a) when he picked up the Idontrecall to return it to Neville whether or not he wanted it, the device sprouted a flag reading HAIL TO THE LEGION BUT MY GOD YOU MUST HAVE BEEN A MONSTER, and b) Professor MacDoogal, who'd been scouting for potential Quidditch players and wasn't picky what house they came from, had seen him wielding his +3 chair leg, and wanted to put a clamp on his Time Turner.

"What's the problem?" he said. "It was an efficient solution!"

"Mr Potter-Evans-Verrazano–Narrows-Bridge," she said, "half the school have time turners, and if the other half find out about them, _everyone_ will want one!"

"So?"

"For heaven's sake! You're genre savvy, surely you've read THE MAN WHO FOLDED HIMSELF?"

"My parents took it away and burned it."

She nodded thoughtfully. "Suffice it to say no one will get their homework done _ever again_."

And then he'd been escorted by Professor Flutterwick to the head office, because Headmaster Gormenghast wanted to see him.

"Harry," said the ancient wizard, "a little bird told me you have an Invisibility Cloak."

"Really?" said Harry.

"Yes," said the ancient wizard. "That one." He pointed to a clock on the wall. A little bird popped out of it and burst into flames. Soon the fire spread to most of the office despite the Headmaster's best containment spells, and they were forced to continue their conversation in the cloakroom.

"Phoenixes," sighed the Professor, "they make terrible pets. Harry, I have a mysterious gift for you." He pointed to the wall, where there were three doors. "It is behind one of them. Pick one."

"It makes more sense to switch after you open the door," sang Harry.

"Oh, you know that one," snarled Dumbledore pleasantly. "You are indeed puissant, you little pissant. Here."

He handed Harry a small box.

Harry opened it and found inside a tiny yellowish crystal with a spike sticking out of one side.

"What...what is this?" said Harry.

"It is...your father's stone," intoned the ancient wizard. "Keep it with you at all times."

"Why?"

"To remind yourself of something your father always said. Once you've passed a stone like that, he said, facing Voldemort is a walk in the park."

"Gotcha," said Harry.

"Now, as to this Invisibility Cloak," said Dumbledore, showing Harry his own Invisibility Cloak.

"How'd you get that?" squeaked Harry, clutching at his absent cloak. No wonder it had gotten drafty!

"I'm ALBUS FREAKING DUMBLEDORE," said Dumbledore pleasantly. "Now," he resumed, "this cloak is one of the Deathly Hallows, which is to say it's a relic so old that it dates back to the noun form of the word hallow, and I just wanted to tell you that it's of historical significance, and you should under no circumstances—"

"Unravel it and turn it into a super-suit?"

"Precisely," said Dumbledore, returning it to him. "Oh, and it's part of a tripartite set. There's also the Resurrection Stone, which is a ring that can bring back the dead—"

"No way!" said Harry.

"Way," said Dumbledore pleasantly.

"No way!" said Harry unpleasantly.

"Way," said Dumbledore pleasantly.

"NO WAY!" said Harry angrily.

"Way," said Dumbledore pleasantly.

"DEAD IS DEAD, COCKCHAFER!" roared Harry, going for his wand. His eyes crossed, focusing on the wand of elder that Dumbledore was currently pointing between them.

"This is the .44 caliber Deathstick, the most powerful wand in the world," said Dumbledore pleasantly, "It is the third and last of the Deathly Hallows, and it will blow your head clean through the factually-known-to-exist afterlife. So...are you wearing clean underwear...Harry?"

Harry coughed. "You were saying about the ring that can bring back the dead?"

"Ah, yes," said Dumbledore, putting the Elder Wand away, "if you find it, don't pick it up, it's cursed."

"Roger that," said Harry.

Dumbledore arched an eyebrow. "The thought had occurred to me, but as I say, it's cursed."

"Huh?" said Harry.

"Never mind. Now!" said Dumbledore, clapping his hands, "let us return to my desk, as there is one more artifact I have for you."

They went back into the office and Harry was surprised to find it undamaged.

"Fire is my _bicce_ ," said Dumbledore, "if you'll pardon my Anglo-Saxon." He fetched a book from one of his desk drawers. "This, Harry, is one of your mother's old coursebooks."

Harry looked at the book. It said REMEDIAL TRANSFIGURATION, and tucked in it as a bookmark was a pamphlet: _Transfigurative Cosmetology That Just Might Work!_

Scrawled on the pamphlet, in green ink like that had been used to write _Property Of Ur Dad_ on his Invisibility Cloak, was a note reading _Try This On Petu_ _l_ _a!_

Dumbledore looked at Harry.

Harry looked at Dumbledore.

The sun set.

The moon rose.

The phoenix clock burst into flames again.

"Have you anything to say to me, Harry?" said Dumbledore, stroking his burning beard.


	13. Discipline In The Dungeon

" _Oh, is that what we're calling it now?"_

* * *

Since Harry's getting in a "plowboy draws on top gun" affair with Dumbledore had occurred in private, the whole school knew about it by the next morning.

"For god's sake, Harry, don't draw on Snape," hissed his prefect into his until-then-sleeping ear.

"Gotcha," said Harry, and might well have followed through on it, except that getting to breakfast amounted to a positive gauntlet of smartly-dressed students begging him not to draw on Snape.

"This is getting ridiculous, Hermione," he said.

"But you've got to be careful, Harry!" she said urgently. "I've read it in books! Snape runs his class like it was still the 18th century! 19th, tops!"

"Okay, okay!"

But when he finally got to the Great Hall, Fred and George told him not to worry, they'd mail him a cake with a file in it when he was sent to Azkaban.

"Oh, for Trotsky's sake," said Harry, "why does _everyone_ think I'm going to draw on Snape?"

"He's mean motorscooter!" said Fred.

"And a bad go-getter!" said George.

"He's the toughest man there is alive!" said Fred.

"It's true," said Mr Hagrid, the groundskeeper, who happened to passing by. "He made a suit out of my pet wildcat."

"I don't believe it," said Harry, picking up a cupcake from the breakfast table.

"It's TRUE!" cried Mr Hagrid, and burst into tears. "TWO JACKETS AND A PAIR OF PANTS! OH THE HUMANITY!"

"No, no," said Harry, "I mean I don't believe that they serve cupcakes for breakfast! How long has the wizarding world been completely insane?"

* * *

Harry walked in the door of the Potions classroom.

"One million points from Ravenclaw," said Snape smoothly.

"Aw COME ON!" said Harry. "For _what?_ "

"Questioning me," said Snape. "Which you just did."

"I hadn't questioned you yet!"

"Said the boy with the Time Turner," said Snape smoothly. "An additional one million points from Ravenclaw for your cheek. That's the same as two thousand thousand points. And that's terrible."

Harry glared into the professor's inky black eyes. It hardly mattered; by the end of Mortal Kombat, Professor Quirrel had awarded every house Aleph-null House points. "Take another two million, now that we know you can count."

Half the class screamed and fainted. The other half looked like it wanted to elect him God.

"Uncountably infinite points from Ravenclaw," said Snape smoothly, his dead black eyes boring straight into Harry's head and flicking idly through his synapses.

"WHAT!" said Harry. Snape wasn't a supergenius, how would he know about countable and uncountable infinities? "YOU'RE READING MY MIND!"

"Yes, yes, of course I am," said Snape. "Now, put this rubber apron on, and these safety goggles."

Harry calmed down. At last, _chemistry class!_

"You're the boss," he said.

"Splendid," said Snape, also donning a rubber apron. "Now: let's cook."

"NON SERVIAM!" screamed Harry.

* * *

"So, Harry," said Dumbledore. "I've heard one report of this day from Professor Snape. Would you care to tell me what happened in your own words?"

Harry spoke with icy calm. "HE TRIED TO ENTICE ME INTO COOKING METH! AND HE READ MY MIND! I'M GOING TO THE NEWSPAPERS!"

"And what of it," said Snape through steepled fingers. "I always begin class with an applied lecture on the mysteries of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Crystal meth is simply one of the secret herbs and spices. It's like cooking with wine, it boils off. As to your comical threat, no one ever reads past page two of the _Daily Prophet_ , that is what page three is for. And, as the editor of the _Daily Prophet_ replies upon _me_ for meth—"

"What _Daily Prophet_?" said Harry in a voice whose temperature had dropped below subzero. "I'm going to the _Quibbler_. Think what THAT headline will read."

Snape blanched. "You wouldn't _dare!_ "

" _I am Harry James Potter Excessive-Use-Of-Force-On-The-Blues-Brothers-Is-Authorized Von Wulfenbach Evans-Verres, little man, and there is nothing I would not dare,"_ said Harry. And then applied a style-sheet to his words to turn them into small capitals.

"Harry, please be reasonable," said Professor Chandra Flitwickramasinghe, who was there instead of Professor MacDoogle because he was Harry's head of house and she was not. "You'll leave the school without a Potions teacher."

"Professor Sprout can cover for him," laughed Harry.

"That's true," admitted Flitwickramasinghe.

"Well, Harry certainly seems to have backed us into a corner," Dumbledore said, smiling happily. "He is simply too AW3S0M4½ for the likes of us."

And so it was that in a ceremony at dinner Professor Snape was Transfigured into a scarecrow, wrapped in unbreakable chains forged in the heart of a dwarf star, and deposited into a magic mirror which was then thrown into the event horizon of a collapsing galaxy, therein to be imprisoned forever or until they needed the mirror back, whichever came first.

"Not bad, Harry!" said Fred.

"Nine out of ten!" said George.


	14. More Discipline Less Dungeon

" _Isn't this a little..."  
BLAM_  
" _No! It's a LOT!"_

* * *

And now it was Mortal Kombat class again, which had been moved to Room 101 for some unknown reason.

Professor Quirrel was escorted in by two young wizards who looked remarkably like Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman, and who stayed with him all class although they soon ceased to be noticed.

"Today, class, I had hoped to teach you more of the basic defensive technique of running away," said Quirrel. "But recent events remind me that before one can master running away one must master the art of backing down, and so instead we will learn through ritual humiliation, a technique I learned as a member of the _Indigo Cow Fighting Society_. Harry Tinker-To-Evans-To-Chance, _come on down!_ "

With grave reluctance, Harry trotted up alongside Professor Quirrel.

"Mr Tinker-Tailor-Solder-Spy," said Quirrel, laying a friendly hand on Harry's shoulder, "have you ever been in a Turkish prison?"

"Um," said Harry, "no."

"Of course you haven't," snapped Quirrel, and slapped him in the face. "If you had, you would have had more sense to get in a fight with someone you can't _beat!_ Which you have done _twice in two days!_ "

Harry scowled. "I won the second time."

"Shut it, boy! Do you know what happens when you pick a fight with someone you can't beat?"

"Um," said Harry. "You...lose?"

"Correct! As happened in the _Indigo Cow Fighting Society_ when Lord Voldemort came by! He demanded that _Count Dummé himself_ teach him the _Death Poke_. When informed that learning the technique required a teenchy bit of patience, the Dark Lord ripped Count Dummé's tongue out through his bum and strangled him to death with it! Which was in _exceedingly poor taste!_ "

Quirrel paused. "Technically Count Dummé did not pick a fight with Lord Voldemort. Nonetheless he _lost_ to Lord Voldemort, so the point stands. You cannot win against Lord Voldemort, and the only lose-while-surviving move is not to play! _This will be on the test!_ "

Everyone _who_ could write took notes furiously. Gregory Goyle raised his hand. "Do you know the Death Poke, sir?" he quavered.

"Do I look like Lord Voldemort? Of course I do! And to answer your question, I am an expert at the Death Poke, or, to use its proper name, the five-point dual-sphere spontaneous implosion technique."

"Will you teach it to us, Master?"

"In time, in time. Have patience, or I'll rip your tongue out like I did to Count D...racula."

Goyle's co-conspirator Crabbe raised his hand.

"What do you want, buster?" said Quirrel impatiently.

"It's Vincent, sir," quivered Crabbe. "Does the... the five-point dual-sphere spontaneous implosion technique work against girls?"

"Girls?!" said Quirrel. "What the hell is wrong with you? Only Lord Voldemort would fight a girl! Boot to the head!" He booted Crabbe in the head from across the room. There was a scattering of applause. "Any other stupid questions? No? Good. Now, back to the ritual humiliation! Harry, take off all your clothes."

"EW, SQUICK!" screamed Hermione, and fled the classroom.

"Er...what?" said Harry.

Quirrel displayed the sad wry grin that made everyone love him no matter how weird or creepy or legally actionable he got. " _Evanesco jimllfixit!_ "

"Yeek!"

" _Don't worry, Harry, I'm calling J.K. Rowling!"_ cried Hermione, poking her head back in the door.

"Oh, pooh," scoffed Quirrel. "It's for his own good! Now, traditionally, Harry, this exercise takes the form of the whole class lining up and hocking loogies onto your fair white body, but as none of us have had breakfast I've laid in a supply of ethically-sourced vegan gluten-free phlegm alternative. Now, who will cast the first gob? Come on, don't be shy…

"All right, I'll pick: Sally-Anne Perks, come on down! ...Where'd she go?"

* * *

"Grovel, grovel," groveled Harry.

Forty minutes and thirty-nine C&Ds from J.K. Rowling's ninja lawyers later, Harry wasn't entirely sure whether he liked this class any more. Nor was he entirely clear what if anything he had learned. But after thinking about it until beads of sweat stood out on his brow he finally figured out why this was happening: he was in a hurt/comfort fic. But with whom was he being slashed?

"Excellent groveling, Harry," said Professor Quirrel kindly. " _Aguamenti maxima frigideiro_!"

"AUUUUGH" said Harry.

"Now, class," said Quirrel, "whilst Harry dries off using this lovely scrummy warm soft fuzzy Turkish prison towel — go off and do that in that little room over there, would you, join you in a tick — we'll have a short discussion of the Wizarding World's Statute of Secrecy as it compares to Star Trek's Prime Directive. Open your copies of Marshak & Culbreath to page...I forget, it's the part immediately after Omne and Spock beat the living snot out of each other..."

 _Winning?_ decided Harry.

"CEASE AND DESIST!" roared Ninja Lawyer #40, only to meet the same fate as the previous 39.

"Drat!" said Quirrel, blowing smoke off his wand. "I meant to ask that one a question..."


	15. Young Einstein On The Couch

" _Ooh, your science is so hard..."_

* * *

Harry lay on the baize couch in Professor Quirrel's room and stared up at the ceiling and wondered who would paint a ceiling gray. Then he marveled at the baize couch. It was portable, yet soft! What genius had thought to combine two such heterogeneous concepts as portability and softness? It must have been Professor Quirrel! _He must have an_ _enormous_ _IQ_ , thought Harry, and briefly swooned.

Next to the couch was a box of Turkish Delight, to which Harry helped himself, and a bookshelf containing the collected works of John Norman, which he'd read before.

Suddenly he felt a sense of Foreboding, and backed away from the door just as Professor Quirrel came through it.

"Good evening," said Quirrel with a sadly hopeful smile, fetching a mop. "Would you like to discuss your Dark Lord career path now, or would you rather hold off until later?"

"I don't want to be a Dark Lord."

"Of course you do. Everybody wants to rule the world. Especially you. I could tell by the way you said 'Thank you, sir, may I have another' 279 times. No one would put up with that kind of abuse without an ulterior motive."

"What about Jim Caviezel?"

"I saw that movie 37 times," said Quirrel. "But remember, even in that mythos God is the original Dark Lord. He invented darkness. You see? Ulterior motive. _Rationalization!_ "

" _Genius!_ " cried Harry.

"Thank you," said Quirrel. "So, you want to be a Dark Lord. I can help you with everything from study guides to job placement services. Where shall we begin?"

"I need a moment," said Harry. "This makes everything clear! When I was being socialised as a muggle, and the neighborhood urchins gave me a ball to play with just so they could take it away again, and I kicked them all in the kidneys and most of them died and my parents had to take me out of school which is what I wanted all along — and I killed and ate my mathematics tutor, Dr. Moriarty —"

" _Total_ Dark Lord."

"Are you sure it's not just my dark _side_?"

"The wizard soul is a Möbius strip," said Quirrel confidently.

"WIZARDS HAVE SOULS?"

"Yes, but muggles don't, well-known fact."

Harry reeled. His world view had been upturned in the space of sentences. It was almost enough to make him want to verify these claims scientifically, but hey, almost only counts in certain sports he didn't play and couldn't remember.

"How did you get away with the mass murder, by the way?" inquired Quirrel.

"I was only five. I was still cute, then. Oh, and wait! I feel guilty about it."

"Even about the teacher?"

"Yes! The only reason I ate him was that we had two bottles of relish about to expire."

"Hm," said Quirrel, tapping Harry's cheek.

"Please don't tap my cheek, Professor. My head goes Jimi Hendrix when you do that. ...Or that one. ...Especially not those."

"Yes," said Quirrel, retracting his hand. "Well, we can work around the whole guilt thing, make it work for you. Have you ever heard a song called 'The Masochism Tango'? You can learn to enjoy the screams of your own tormented conscience if you work at it."

They both laughed.

"But seriously," said Harry, "my parents don't like it when I murder people, and I'm kind of down on it personally because my original parents were murdered by Lord Voldemort."

"I know they were, Harry, I was there."

" _What? Why?"_

"...I was delivering a pizza. They had no money. Then Voldemort came. It was a terrible tragedy for all involved. But you can overcome such scruples in time, I assure you."

"Still," said Harry, "it doesn't quite fit my career goal, to learn all that is learnable and ascend to godhood. I mean, you can't get good information out of people by torturing them — I know, I've tried."

"So have I, so have I," said Quirrel wistfully. "It could have revolutionized test administration. Perfect scores, all around, but no... So, Dark God. Right. I expect I've got some pamphlets around here somewhere, I think Durmstrang offers a post-doctorate program in that area..."

"Say, that reminds me!" said Harry brightly. "Only three months ago, I'd planned on becoming a scientist—"

"SCIENCE?" spat Quirrel. "I cannot picture you wasting your days in a white lab coat doing pointless things to rats!"

"How about doing pointy things?" said Harry timidly. "In order to create biowarfare agents?"

"Oh, well, that's all right then."

"Actually, I was going to be a physicist," said Harry. "We're talking WIDE-SCALE destruction."

"How wide?" asked Quirrel, shuffling through his papers. "As a boy I imagined smashing the Moon through the Earth."

"Imagine _crushing_ the Earth between two planes of _solidified light_ until there's nothing left of it but _free electrons!_ "

"You silly twisted boy, you," chided Quirrel, wiping drool from the corner of his mouth. "If you completely annihilate the planet, you'll do away with all your victims, and what is a Dark Lord without victims!"

"Say," said Harry slyly, "did you just establish circumstances under which you'd find life not worth living?"

"Certainly not! Now get back to the subject. A Dark Lord is nothing without victims — he ceases to _be_ , whether he wants to or not! It's logic!"

"Dark God, remember?" said Harry. "I'll create _new_ life and torment _that_!"

"Hm," said Quirrel, and mopped drool from the other corner of his mouth. "That sounds quite...awesome. But there's a long road from Dark Lord to Dark God. Let's not destroy the Earth until we have established a secondary source of Nutella."

"Sure thing!" said Harry.

"Incidentally, this...solidified light thing, I would really appreciate it if you didn't tell the muggles about it. It's the sort of thing you should keep a secret."

"Oh, they already know," said Harry. "Besides, you can't keep fundamental principles a secret, they get rediscovered."

"You can with MAGIC," said Quirrel.

"What IS magic, by the way?"

"Don't know, don't care."

"I can see why you're not into science," said Harry.

"Oh, I love SOME science," sniffed Quirrel, raising his wand. " _Planetario maxima!_ "

Suddenly Harry was in the midst of an endless field of stars, burning cold and ruthless, with the diamond clarity of a hammer of pure titanium descending upon an anvil of yielding flesh, whee-splat.

"Woo," said Harry. "How'dja do that?"

"This is a live feed from Pioneer 10," said Quirrel. "I cast a...spell on it pre-launch.

"Sometimes," he sighed charismatically, "when I get particularly irritated by absolutely everything in this absolutely irritating world, I enter the silence of my lonely room, turn on the universe, put 'Astronomy Domine' on repeat and smoke opium.

"And then, refreshed, I emerge as though from a chrysalis into the mundane world to kill and kill again."

"You are the _greatest man who ever lived_ ," said Harry.

"Am I the winner?"

"You're the winner."

"Am I the awesome winner?"

"You're the awesome winner over all awesome winners."

"Who's my little looooser?" said Quirrel, chucking Harry under the chin.

"I am, I am, I aaaaaammmmm!"

Abruptly, someone kicked down the door. It was Headmaster Gumblejack.

"YO!" he said, setting his massive hobnailed dragonhide boot down into a statically-electrified spreading cloud of crumbled splinters that was all that remained of the door. "What's all this crud I hear about mass spitgobbing the Boy Who Lived and Avada-Kedavring 40 of J.K. Rowling's best lawyers?!"

"GTFO OLD MAN!" screamed Harry.

Quirrel slapped Harry in the face. "Be nice," he said. "I don't have tenure."

"Um," said Harry meekly, "please gtfo, Headmaster, if that's all right with you..."

"?" said Gumblejack. "Well, all right. ...No, hang on, answer my questions!"

"This is a hurt/comfort fic," explained Professor Quirrel. "I thought it best that young Harry be hurt and comforted on a strictly professional basis in a formal setting. Also, there were 42 lawyers, but everyone hates lawyers. Oh, and incidentally, Harry is still quite angry about Professor Snupe riffling his synapses, I noticed that when I read his mind."

"Yes, I noticed it also," mused Gumblejack. "Just now."

"IS _EVERYBODY_ READING MY MIND?" screamed Harry.

I know _I_ am, how about you?

"I suggest Occlumency lessons at the school's expense," said Quirrel. "Although you'll have to find some trustworthy person to administer them."

"I DON'T TRUST ANYBODY ANY MORE," said Harry.

"Well, then, use your Time Turner and administer them to yourself," said Quirrel.

"That makes sense," said Gumblejack. "And it's economical, too!"


	16. Granger Is Her Middle Name

" _Sir, do not discuss my reproductive cycle in front of enemy girls!"_

* * *

Hermione Jane Rocket Granger-Tebbs-Goldberg-Klein-Gogberashvili was, no doubt about it, AW6S2M6.02x10²³.

Not only was she beating Harry Potter-Evans-Verres at every single magic-type class except broomstick riding (in which, by mutual agreement, they had both taken an Incomplete), not only had she exceeded him in hyphenated last names by deed poll, she had now wrested away control of his story.

Harry didn't know it, but he should never have proposed that book-reading contest, because, after all, she needed to read only one book, namely HARRY POTTER AND THE METHOD OF RATIONALIZATION, as it necessarily incorporated all the books _he_ was reading...

And then she had successfully Transfigured ink to narrativium, and the rest was rewrites.

She flipped ahead several chapters. "Oh, really," she smirked, "like that's going to happen." She inked in another change and peered over the top of the book. Harry, still halfway through THE BOOK OF SAND and making no progress, didn't seem to notice that history had changed underneath him.

Hermione smiled. Yesterday she was only the Zelenka to his McKay, the checker of his maths, but today, and tomorrow and tomorrow, the coffee-demanding rat would get his due. "Nobody give me trouble," she whispered, "I'm nationwide, baby."

And the bell rang and the contest was over.

"You lose, Potter," said the combined students of Ravenclaw.

"Curse!" cried Harry. "I have run afoul of Hofstadter's Law! How embarrassing."

"That means you have to perform a forfeit," said Hermione.

"A forfeit!" cried Harry. "What forfeit?"

"I'll think of something," she said, twirling her quill. "Give me a chapter or so."

* * *

Hours later, in a stone chamber lit only by a single green-tinged _lumos_ , two vague figures met.

"I declare this meeting of _Get Rid Of Slimy normalS_ open," declared one.

"'kay," yawned the other, "can we get on with bumping off my dad?"

"All right," said Harry. "We shall kill him with SCIENCE!"

"Yay science!" chirped Darko. "What's science?"

"Oh, Darko, my new friend," said Harry, his face lit green from below his chin, "do you know the Klingon proverb that says, 'Let the wookiee win'?"

"Nope."

"So it is with science. You pull a knife, the universe pulls a gun. You send the universe to the hospital, the universe sends you to the morgue. That's the scientific method, and that's how you attain ultimate power: by carefully observing what sends you to the morgue and doing it to other people first.

"Do you like...numbers, Darko?" he added nervously.

Darko shook his head no. In the dark. "No," he said after a bit.

"Whew!" said Harry. "Good, I'd hate to lose you to pure mathematics. Erdős never killed _anybody_!" He paused to wipe tears from his eyes at the waste of a great mind. "Now!" he continued, "science is a means of using parts of the universe to beat up other parts of the universe. It's better than magic, because any cretin like Crabbe or Goyle can magic, but only geniuses like me can science. The word is derived from the Sanskrit _ch'yati_ , meaning 'he cuts off'."

"Can you science my Dad's head off?" said Darko with polite interest.

"Yep!"

"Even though he's got all kinds of defensive charms and is proof against everything other than Avada Kedavra?"

"Yep!"

"Cool," said Darko, and smiled a dreamy smile. He was finally having a real grown-up conversation.

"So, science!" said Harry. "Where shall we start with our sciencing? I know! You Malfoys are heavily into blood purism, right?"

"You bet," said Darko. "We're so inbred we smell like yeast."

"Hmm," said Harry. "I wondered. Okay, we'll do genetics. I know virtually nothing about it, but you know less than nothing, so that's all right.

"Anyway, to combine with science: science rules, okay? if you get into a magic duel with a mudblood and that mudblood cleans your clock, you lost, right?"

"That could never happen," said Darko confidently.

"The universe is bigger than you."

"So it is!" mused Darko. "My worldview is being upturned."

"And if you line up all the purebloods and all the mudbloods and have a hex-off and the mudbloods win, that's that, right? This pureblood-is-best stuff falls by the wayside, destroyed by observed evidence."

Darko made a moue. "I'm starting not to like science."

"Science," explained Harry through gritted teeth, "is how you kill all the mudbloods _after_ they beat you at hexing."

"So with science I always win?" said Darko.

"Right!"

"Excellent!" said Darko.

They played air guitar.

"Oh," said Harry, "killing all the mudbloods reminds me: in science there are things Man Was Not Meant To Know."

Darko cocked his head. "My tutors all say that."

"Yeah, any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic except for being better. Knowledge is power, so absolute knowledge corrupts absolutely. Basically, you don't want hoi polloi becoming Dark Gods."

"Gotcha."

There was a pause during which Harry visibly shuddered at the prospect of accidentally creating Dark Gods. "You know," he said slowly, "it occurs to me that _Get Rid Of Slimy normalS_ is an inadequate name for a venture so great and terrible as this. We need something more sophisticated. Give me a minute."

Darko watched Harry think until shiny beads of sweat stood out on his brow like tiny glowing emeralds.

"Eureka!" cried Harry. "We shall call ourselves... _the Q_."

Darko blinked. "The queue? As in waiting in?"

"No," said Harry, "Q as in short for Quirrell-Couch, which I was lying on when I first decided to become a Dark God. That was one comfortable couch. We'll be the Q.C. that meets on the Q.T."

"O.K."

"And our Latin motto is _Si Non Alium Late Jactaret Odorem Laurus Erat_."

"Okay."

"Want to know why?"

"Nope," said Darko, and shrugged helplessly. "Wizards are incurious, what can I say."

* * *

Harry went from the first meeting of the Q.C. to dinner, where he grabbed a can labeled FOOD and ate from it with his fingers on his way up to Ravenclaw.

The Ravenclaw door said, "What is your name?"

He said, "Harry James Potter Evans-Verres."

The Ravenclaw door said, "What is your quest?"

He said, "Crush my enemies. See them driven before me. Ignore the lamentations of my girlfriend."

The door opened. "Please enjoy your trip through this door," it said.

These pop quizzes are getting easier and easier, thought Harry, and went up to bed.

On his pillow he found two copper knuts, a book titled _POP ART: The Indigo Cow Fighting Society Guide To Third Eye Gouging_ , and a note.

 _My dear, my very dear Harry, my poppet, my pigsnie_ (the note began).  
 _Enemies are all around. How will you make it on your own? This book on Occlumency will help. The wizarding world is awfully big, boy, and you're all alone, but it's time you started living, so let someone else do some giving. You have rid yourself of Snape, but some of his operatives, all of them in fact, are Slytherin; therefore I have enclosed two spare knuts._

It was signed _Satan Clause_.

Harry stuffed the book, the note and his knuts into his pouc, turned up the Quietus, pulled the covers over his head and died.

* * *

"And so Harry goes to it," said Hermione, dotting the i in died with a smiley face.

She tapped her pen against her teeth.

"No," she decided, "death's too good for him."

* * *

Harry remembered his unfinished business, wearily stuffed his escaping Möbius-strip soul, which looked like something bizarre from Steve Ditko's MR. A comics, back into his body, got out of bed and went down to the common room. He found a nice wide writing desk, scooted the raven off it, pulled back a comfortable chair, and sat down. Then he got up and sat down on the comfortable chair.

He sharpened his mechanical pencil and got out a nice clean sheet of paper.

His parents had said specifically that if he wanted to come home again, ever, he was to write them every week without fail, just so that they knew he was alive, unharmed, and not in prison.

Harry mentally organized his material, and started writing:

 _Dear Mume and Dad:  
I am alive, unharmed, and not in prison.  
Your loving son,  
Harry James Pinkamena Evans-Verres Granger.  
P.S. I am getting wathan-bonded._

* * *

Breakfast next morning was cupcakes again. It was always cupcakes. Cupcakes, cupcakes, cupcakes.

He was on his third — vanilla with vanilla frosting — when a huge hollow voice cut through all breakfast conversation like a sword of ice.

 ** _SHE IS COMING,_** it said cubically. **_THE THREEFOLD GIRL. SHE DANCES IN THE LONELY PLACES LIKE SHE DON'T EVEN CARE._**

At the High Table, Professor Dumbledore raised an eyebrow.

 ** _O CREATOR OF US ALL,_** said the voice, **_THE HERMICORN IS COMING. BEWARE! BEWARE! HER FLASHING EYES, HER BUSHY HAIR!_**

Prophecy betting pools started up at every table — even, to Harry's skepticky disgust, Ravenclaw.

"Worra lorra rubbish," said Harry, looking across the table at Hermione, who looked enigmatically back at him over the top of a book in a plain brown wrapper — no, surely it was a paper-bag dust-jacket...

"Oh, say not so," said a passing madwoman. "Divination is magically valid. And scientifically vital for that reason. Pay attention to these future echoes. Future events such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in the unknown... the mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here...at Hogwarts...so Criswell has predicted..."

"No it _isn't_ ," said Harry with annoyance, "I'm here to kick arse and take names!" He popped an irritated Bazooka Joe into his mouth.

"Sybill Trelawney," supplied the madwoman. Harry wrote it down.

It was going to be a long day.

 ** _CEDRIC DIGGORY HAS A CUTE BUTT_ ,** added the voice.

Cedric Diggory spewed cupcake frosting over most of Hufflepuff. Professor Dumbledore suffered a coughing fit.

 ** _ALSO_ ,** said the voice, ** _HEADS UP, H.P. WILL DESTROY ALL MANKIND_.**

Professor Quirrel spewed cupcake frosting over most of the Great Hall.

"It could mean _Hewlett-Packard_ for Trotsky's sake!" screamed Harry.


	17. Science Straight From The Heart

" _Those wild and crazy scientific guys, I love 'em!"_

* * *

In a small private-study room in Ravenclaw Tower, Harry JPEG Compression Verruca was hitting himself in the head with a brick.

Hermione was watching him do it.

Harry had explained sciencing to Hermione using the example of hitting people over the head with red (or green) truncheons to find out which color of truncheon they preferred, stressing how you should experiment properly when hitting people over the head with red (or green) truncheons, i.e., automate the hitting to eliminate hitter-based biases, make sure the victims are not color-blind, and get signed release forms before starting.

"Also," he'd added, "if the green truncheons turn red, you're hitting too hard."

Hermione had stared at him. "Harry," she'd said hesitantly, "have you done that experiment yourself?"

"Of course!"

"What did you learn?"

"...I really like hitting people over the head with truncheons."

And then they had done science, and he hadn't gotten a result he expected, so he was hitting himself in the head with a brick.

"Bad brain! Bad!" he cried. _Whack! Whack! Whack!_

"Harry, you really worry me sometimes," said Hermione.

It was problematic, he had to admit, because he'd hit himself so hard he no longer remembered what his hypothesis was, and according to his mostly-blank notebook he had neglected to write it down.

Probably it had something to do with the Carrot Machine, the one that Elmer Fudd had built to satisfy Bugs Bunny's endless demands for carrots. (There was a carrot template, and if you fed the machine the right ingredients it would produce a carrot, and if you gave it the wrong ones it would approximate the carrot — green carrots, cubical carrots, that sort of thing.) That would explain the cloud of variously malformed bats overhead and the spell-book in front of him opened to the bat-making spell page. Then again perhaps he was making a Lönnrot inference, irrationally letting his own psychology guide him straight into doom. Rationalization wasn't all was cracked up to be, and neither was his skull. Perhaps he should put down the brick. Yes, that seemed likely. He tossed it over his shoulder. A cat yowled in pain.

He looked at his notebook. At the bottom of the page was the notation "Safe word: ANTWERP."

"Antwerp?" he said.

Hermione promptly explained his experimental protocol, premises and goals.

"Oh," he said. "Pass me a fresh brick, Hermione?"

 _Whack! Whack! Whack!_

* * *

In the dungeons of Slytherin, the second, and, as it happened, final, meeting of the Q was in session.

"Science!" said Harry.

"Killing my dad?" said Darko hopefully.

"Soon, soon! I wish first to ridicule purebloodism."

"Not so loud, we're in the dungeons of Slytherin."

"What sense does purebloodism even make?" demanded Harry. "I mean, really, by traditional British royal blood analogy, commoners would occasionally pop out royalty."

"They could call it striking earl," said the Bloody Baron, who was passing through the room. Harry and Darko watched him leave.

"The point is," said Harry, "it's no skin off your nose where wizards come from."

"Well," said Darko, "the general idea is that wizards are losing their collective puissance by individuals breeding with muggles."

"And they know this how?"

"Cos we can't awesome the way they used to awesome in the Good Old Days."

"The Good Old Days back before isolationism due to the statute of secrecy?"

"What's your point?"

"That there's probably less muggle interbreeding now than there used to be?"

Darko gasped. "Are you suggesting I _question my premises?_ It's not done, old boy, simply not _done!_ My head was filled with truth and nailed shut a long time ago."

"But you're a Slytherin. How can you be an effective infiltrator without simulating a belief system?"

"Oh, I can do that," said Darko.

"Aha!" cried Harry. "So okay. You've infiltrated the —" _Society for the Preservation of English Wizardry?_ _No, n_ _ot sciencey enough_ — "Society for Tupping English Muggles at the behest of the revived Lord Voldemort. I am a purebloodist. I say to you, in public, Wizards are losing their puissance because of interbreeding, and you say?"

"No they're not."

"And I say Why and you say?"

"Because."

"And you'll be thrown out of the Society if you say that again and Lord Voldemort hates it when that sort of thing happens. I say Why and you say?"

"Uh...there are alternative explanations."

"And I say, like what?"

"—We're just using up the world's magic!"

"There you go, you've just conceived of an alternate explanation. Having developed an alternative, you can work out means of testing these two hypotheses against each other, and as a good undercover agent you'll have to go through the motions. And they'll have to be plausible motions. Lord Voldemort commands you!"

"But I don't actually believe it," said Darko. "And the fact that there are other explanations doesn't mean my belief is untrue."

"Well, maybe not, but doubt will worm its way into your heart over time. ...I was sort of hoping you'd have a stunned look of horror on your face at this point, but — baby steps!"

There was a cough.

"Who coughed?" cried Harry.

An invisibility cloak dropped to the floor. "Me," said Harry₂, sheepishly fiddling with his time turner. "I was waiting for you to say stunned look of horror."

"Why?" said Harry₁ suspiciously.

"Oh, you'll laugh when I tell you this," said Harry₂, "but after you leave here you find a copy of THE BIG BOOK OF HORCRUXES in your bed, and, um, well, basically it's a sort of immortality conditional on splitting your soul through murder."

"And you're here to warn me not to split my nonexistent soul through murder?"

"No, I'm here to tell you that just for yucks you're going to try the process _backwards_ , like Albert in the Discworld books did with the Death-Summoning Rite of Ashk'Ente."

"Meaning...?" said Harry₁ as a stunned look of horror appeared on his face.

"Meaning we cast _sectumspectrumsempra maxima_ on my soul and now everyone on Earth is dead," said Harry₂. "Except Hermione, cos we're soul-bonded."

"Imagine that," said Hermione, dropping her invisibility cloak.

"And Draco because he's a horcrux," said Harry₂.

"Yay," said Draco.

"And Cedric Diggory," said Hermione, pulling Cedric Diggory from her mokeskin pouc, "Because things in a mokeskin pouc have a quantum probability of zero."

"And," continued Harry₂, "according to a marginal note in my own handwriting, children of two horcruxy people are born immortal because magic is Lamarckian. So basically every human ever, um, born from now on will live forever."

Harry₁ looked at Harry₂. "MAXIMUM AWESOME!" they cried in unison, and high-fived. Unexpectedly the Blinovitch Limitation Effect caused Cedric Diggory to become immortal.

"My goodness," said Hermione. "Two mildly concussed Harry Potters, Draco Malfoy, Cedric Diggory and little old me. Tee hee! AND ALL OUR CHILDREN SHALL BE IMMORTALL _AND SHALL RULE THE SEVAGRAM!_ "

"It's just a shame we lost Professor Quirrel," said Harry₁.

Unexpectedly, Professor Quirrel erupted from Harry's scar. " _Remember...the dark side of rationalization will be with you...always,_ " he said, and went back inside with a cuckoo noise.

"Ha _haaaa!_ " laughed Harry₁.

"See, told you," said Harry₂.

"Wait a minute, Granger," said the Noble and Most Ancient House of Malfoy, having recovered from his earlier exertion. "What are you suggesting?"

"I'm suggesting," said Hermione, "that another hundred chapters is too long to wait for Harry's next big nude scene."

Hermione looked at her boys, smirked, led them upstairs to the late Professor Quirrel's really comfortable couch...

...and they sat down and _waited until they were 18_ , you _pervs_ , THE END.

* * *

ONE THOUSAND AND NINETEEN YEARS LATER

A large green spaceship landed atop Ravenclaw tower, destroying most of it, and a silver robot emerged.

"Yo," he said around his cigar, "I got a consignment of an infinite number of monkey's paws here — who's gonna sign for it?"


End file.
